Joey Silvera's Service Animals 18 Review

Director

Joey Silvera

Cast

Teagan Presley, Heather Gables, Melissa Lauren, Mary Jane, Katja Kassin, Keri Sable, Sativa Rose, Mark Ashley, Tommy Gunn, Dirty Harry, Johnny Thrust, Boz, Lucky Starr, Sledge Hammer, Pascal Saint James, Kurt Lockwood, Jay Ashley.

Genre

All Sex

Condoms

None

Female Orgasms

1-2

THOSE WHO MIGHT LIKE IT

Those who like beautiful women and harder edged sex infused with a little personality.

THOSE WHO SHOULD STEER CLEAR

Those who don't like a lot of spitting or slapping with their porn, or those who refuse to believe that some women like to venture onto the wild side of sex on occasion.

REVIEW:
As of this writing, this is the latest of the Service Animals to have been released, and that is now going on five months ago.  Although Tricia Devereaux of Evil Angel has said that the series will continue, it definitely seems to be slowing down, perhaps due to Joey's concentration on other series, such as Hellcats and his new line, Strap Attack (a venture that, if you ask me, has been way too long in coming), along with his smattering of she-male titles.  In any case, I do have to say that I miss Service Animals just a tad, as his work with that series has been the stuff that has affected me the most.  Service Animals #18 is yet another more than worthy addition to this highly acclaimed line, and after experiencing a relative disappointment with Hellcats #5, I'm glad to see that Joey's still got it in all departments.  This is a great disc with six scenes (one exclusively on DVD) that will no doubt find individual favor among a variety of hardcore fetishists, and collective favor among those like me, who've come to so love and respect Joey's intense, but kind hearted passion for his work.

Teagan Presley, Heather Gables, Mark Ashley, Tommy Gun

Well, if you've followed hardcore porn in any capacity for the last year or so, you should already be well aware of Teagan.  I'm here to tell ya, she is one hell-of-a gorgeous creature.  I'm not sure I'm down with all the hype that's surrounded her in 2004, or that I feel quite the huge sense of loss that others feel now that she's gone the way of the contract star at Digital Playground (good for her!).  That said, though, few can deny the pure eye-candy that Teagan brings to the table.  She's got breathtaking honey blonde hair, a gorgeous, tight little body, and a plump, but firm ass.  Heather Gables is another blonde and, although overshadowed a bit by Teagan in this scene, her looks are not to be discounted either.  She has great breasts and is dressed in a cool plaid skirt and a police shirt.  Teagan is christened "the punk" for this encounter and she is there to exact some payback on police officer Heather.  Teagan plays the part pretty well, with some face slapping and a little back and forth spitting, while Heather busily deep throats Tommy's cock.  Mark Ashley is angry that "the punk" started roughing up little miss cop without him and Teagan gets some light discipline of her own.  The girls and the guys pair off, and the fucking begins in earnest.  Teagan looks like she might have had an orgasm at Mark Ashley's capable hands and finally each girl takes it in the ass.  Most of the attention for the latter third of the scene is on Teagan, and this is where things got a bit disappointing for me.  Teagan gets ass-fucked in all kinds of ways, but for whatever reason, as soon as her ass was penetrated, it looked to me more like hard day's work, rather than a great day's sex.  I admit, it had a dark kind of heat in that "you'll take it up the ass cuz I said so" kind of way, but something told me that Teagan really wasn't enjoying herself too much.  Once all the anal was over, though, things heated right back up when she gets some light spanking from Mark after he cums on her ass, and she shares a facial from Tommy.

The thing is, Teagan really gets all the attention in this scene, and she has the looks to justify it.  It seems to me that Heather might have been more interesting to watch during the heavy anal portion, but I could be wrong there.  In any case, Heather disappears a bit and really plays nothing more than a tiny supporting role by the time it all comes to a close.  It all started out wonderfully sexy, with some very cool dominance / submission action, and then, for whatever reason, the anal just had my gritting my teeth empathizing with Teagan's expressions of discomfort.  Unfortunate really, because, and I can't emphasize this enough, Teagan is a just an amazingly gorgeous girl.  More than anything, I wanted to see her feel good.  I might have misread it though.  Differentiating female pain from pleasure in porn, it seems, can be a tricky and subjective proposition.

Teagan Video Capture
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Melissa Lauren, Johnny Thrust, Dirty Harry

Melissa Lauren a cute girl of the French persuasion.  In this scene, she sports blonde hair.  She has a particularly engaging smile, and is well known 'round porn circles as a lover of sex of the most intense variety.  In that way, she's a girl after my own heart.  Melissa is in a police station to sell some cookies, and she is quickly accused of being a drug dealer, when it all goes "downhill" from there.  The scene is characterized by a lot of slapping, a lot of spitting, a little choking, and an overall vibe of the intense, "use her like a piece of meat" variety.  The wonderful caveat, however, is that that is exactly what Melissa wants them to do, and to me, that makes all the difference in the world.  Themes of intense play acting with an emphasis on degradation and even a few moments of masochistic pain are all wrapped up in this crazed document of pornified human animalism.  Melissa isn't afraid to fight back and provoke the guys either, and all the while encourages their behavior by solemnly swearing she's up to no good.  That makes her eventual submission to their rough stuff all the more dynamic.  Obviously, her drool-y throat, and her wet pussy get plenty of attention here, as does her tight ass.  She gets both double penetrated, and a double vaginal penetration for good measure, and takes two loads on her tongue to complete the mess the guys have made of her.  I really loved the intensity of this scene, and I loved that Melissa was up for everything, but at times it got to be a little too ugly for me.  Too much physical abuse and not enough psychological domination.  Too much "frat boy fucking", and not enough underlying motivation.  As rough sex goes, however, Joey brings a fantastic dimension to this scene that is not often found in others' work, save perhaps that of Mason.  Many people will absolutely love this scene for that reason, as for me, well--I wasn't blown away, but hey... I came--so mischief managed. 

Melissa Lauren Video Capture
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Mary Jane, Boz, Lucky Star

Mary Jane is a very very pretty brunette, wearing a yummy looking sheer corsette and a camo-patterned miniskirt.  She completes the rather wonderful picture with a silver collar around her neck, and a couple of netty half-gloves on her hands.  While in the looks department, she's downright fuckalicious, it took me a little longer than normal to warm up to this scene (perhaps because she tends to be very vocal, and at first her moans seemed rather forced).  I eventually got caught up in it despite myself, however, and ended up really enjoying this scene.  She fucks two black guys--or more accurately--they fuck her.  There's no anal for Mary Jane, but there's plenty of drool-soaked cock sucking and pussy fucking, and it's all captured in a suitably dirty garage environment, with Joey's signature juxtaposition of pure grit, alongside exquisite beauty.  Near the end there was a moment that I particularly loved when the two guys are jacking off their cocks, in an obvious attempt to finish out the scene by coating her face.  It's a silly little thing, but Lucky Star steps behind her and puts himself inside her.  He fucks her again simply because he felt like it, because he wanted to.  For whatever reason, on this particular day, that moment struck me.  It seemed a tiny, exquisite reality intermingled with the purposeful, porn performance.  He fucks her until he's had enough, and then he pulls out, steps over to her face and lets it fly.  I loved that moment, and it capped off the scene with that wonderful free-wheeling spontaneity that Joey is so good at encouraging on his sets.  Mary Jane takes one more load on her face before smiling and talking to Joey--discretely pointing out Boz as her favorite guy of the two and genuinely asking Joey whether he liked her performance.  ::raising hand:: I did!  Mary Jane is a bit of a noisemaker, but she made me a believer right quick.  I was smiling even after I came, and that is a wonderfully rare treat in this convoluted underworld that is so otherwise full of "post-porno depression".

Mary Jane Video Capture
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Katja Kassin, Sledge Hammer, Lucky Star, Pascal Saint James

Damn Sam, is Katja a sexy bitch!  This scene starts out with Katja's bodacious booty locked up in a suspended cage.  Sledge Hammer is deciding whether to let her out, amidst her promises to be good.  A fantasy sequence begins in which she is indeed released and she gets to whip Sledge's bare back with a cat-o-nine tails.  She is tiny compared to Sledge and this is all wonderfully sexy to me.  She's also wearing neon yellow, butt-revealing shorts and a matching sheer top and collar.  Quite satisfactory, I must say.  In short order two other guy's join the fray and Katja quickly assumes a more submissive role.  This does not come at the expense of losing her frighteningly powerful sexual presence, however.  Katja is a revered performer for a reason, and not only is she just absolutely gorgeous here, she single-handedly makes you believe that she feels every move the guys make and that she wouldn't have it any other way.  For my tastes, there's a bit too much man-flesh in this scene, but that didn't stop me from busting my own nut at its conclusion, merely because watching Katja make eye contact with one of her double penetrators is nigh on irresistable.  All her holes get plenty filled here, including enough deep throat, spanking, and whipping to turn some people of a more gentle persuasion off.  I, however was not one of them.  Katja's sexuality is almost a force unto itself, and if you're a fan of hardcore of the harder variety, peppered with a delightful dash of genuine feeling, it simply doesn't get much better than this. 

Katja Kassin Video Capture
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Keri Sable, Kurt Lockwood

Keri is a very cute, very thin blonde minx, who I must admit is right up my alley in the looks department.  She's got the fishnets and the studded collar, and hey, that works for me too.  Unfortunately she seems a little awkward and unsure of herself on camera.  Her scene with Kurt Lockwood (a capable and, I think, attractive male performer making the rounds these days) is characterized by some great things to look at, but not much overall intensity or heat.  There's a bit of dirty talk that's on the forced side (including some "bitch" calling that Keri is fine with, but some viewers may dislike), and some fucking that's on the cold side, but if you can get past that, Keri is a cutie and that's the truth.  There's a little deep throat, a little doggy, a little cowgirl, and even a little pile driver, but for those who care there is no anal, and Keri just seems a bit stiff throughout.  Joey does bring out a little life in her through his light hearted questions and some nice verbal back and forth, but all in all, this is the least interesting scene in the movie.  Perhaps that's simply a sign of Keri's inexperience, or perhaps I'm simply on crack.  Either way... 

Keri Sable Video Capture
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Sativa Rose, Jay Ashley (DVD ONLY)

Wow, this is one of those fantastically unusual scenes that has flashes of great brilliance for femdom fetishists like myself, but ultimately somehow misses the mark.  Sativa is a pretty girl of Mexican decent, with full lips and equally full breasts.  She's quite attractive, albeit not particularly my type.  In true Joey style, though, he manages to turn me on to her anyway.  Sativa plays the role of a maid, turning the tables on her long-time employer, Jay Ashley.  Unfortunately, although there are tiny touches of really wonderful power, it just doesn't quite work on a psychological level.  It seems all over the map in its motivation, somehow.  At times Sativa seems to be trying to overpower Jay on a physical level, with a lot of face slapping, and even ball-pulling, but most of the time, action like that just seems to ring false to me.  The best moments in the scene are those that combine the physical with the psychological--particularly when Sativa orders Jay to perform an act that is clearly submissive ("get on your knees, bitch" while she squeezes his cock and balls in her hand, etc.) and Jay, willingly or not, does it, simply because she told him to.  This scene, on the whole, doesn't really capture the dynamics of what a true dominant and submissive power exchange might be like, but moments of it inadvertently do, and those flashes are downright magical.  Ultimately, their encounter was a bit more disappointing in that regard than it was fulfilling, but the fact that it took those steps toward something unique, as so much of Joey's work seems to do, is more than enough for me to praise the effort.  

Sativa Rose Video Capture
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OVERALL:
One of the things that much of today's porn seems to take great pains to ignore is that raw power that a gorgeous woman can have over a man, and the countless different ways in which that power can manifest itself.  In fact, porn seems to be more of a reaction against that power than it is a celebration of it.  It seems, instead, that a lot of what we see in porn today is a sort of crude manifestation of men's fear of women.  This collection of scenes, and in fact Joey Silvera's entire body of work when taken as a whole, is a unique exception in that regard.  Although nothing here seems to quite hit the center of the bulls-eye, there's something about a woman's ability to assert control through the very act of giving it up (take the ideas behind Melissa and Katja's scenes for example).  Alternatively, there is something equally compelling and beautiful about a man allowing a woman to dominate him with her beauty, with her mind, with her malice--in short, with her pussy (as was the attempted case in Sativa and Jay's scene).  Even Mary Jane had a beautiful magic about her, a sense of control over the situation that is extraordinarily sexy, albeit in a more subtle way than the previous examples.  Joey seems to have an instinctive understanding of this dynamic, and yet he also sometimes seems a bit mired in the modern, obligatory, pornographic model:  face slapping for face slapping's sake; spitting for spitting's sake; and fucking for show rather than for feeling.  What starts out as a powerful idea, often seems to degenerate into nothing more than a superficial facade staged for the camera--a series of motions without any real thought given to the meaning behind them.

Still, Joey manages to create flashes of authenticism within that construct much more regularly than most.  Service Animals #18 is a rare example of porn that, within its subtext, harbors the promise of what porn could be.  In that ever-elusive search for balance between the fantasy of sex and its reality, all captured in a document of video for us to enjoy, Joey, along with Buttman himself, John Stagliano, remains one of the best directors out there in my opinion.  I hope he never stops working to further develop his intangible and largely unappreciated gift.

EXTRAS:
In addition to the regular fair (a photo gallery, cast list by scene, videographies, and a fetish menu), and the DVD only scene between Sativa Rose and Jay Ashley, there is about 8 minutes of additional sex footage included.  There's a little bit from all the scenes except Sativa's, but my favorite snippet is a tiny post-game "interview" with Melissa Lauren where she and Joey discuss her plans for her website.  It's authentic and silly, and catching that tiny glimpse of Melissa's personality made me smile.

Questions or constructive comments about this review? Email me at MLyons@my.adultdvdtalk.com


Other Adult Movie Reviews by Mike Lyons